This board is a composition workshop, like a writers' workshop: post your work with questions about style or vocabulary, comment on other people's work, post composition challenges on some topic or form, or just dazzle us with your inventive use of galliambics.

I wrote this story for this year's German Federal Competition of Foreign Languages but got kicked out at the very first stage Since they don't tell the participants what they didn't like about their stories, I don't know what is wrong with my story.
I would be very pleased if you read my little tale and commented on it. My Latin teacher already checked grammar, vocabs and spelling, so this is not that important (if you find a mistake, you may tell me nevertheless, of course!). I especially would like to know how you like the general idea of the story. Is the ending understandable? I mean, do you get the gist of the morale that I wanted to communicate? My teacher had a slight problem understanding it.

I like the story and it's well written, but I can't say I completely understand it

The story builds the suspense well enough, as the family member begin to slowly vanish, but I don't know what is going on in the garden scene. For example, what is this refering to, "res ingens, rosea ut aures suae atque quinque bacula habens"? Also, I don't know what the "apparatum angulatum" is supposed to be, "canum ut pellis muris." I know these are important elements of the story, but I'm not sure how to understand them.

On a general level, what are the mice really doing outdoors at 'work'? I assumed they were each killed, but then why are they all still present in the garden when Candida arrives? Why is their being killed by humans a secret, and why would it be kept secret? I presume the moral is something about the danger of curiosity yet with the mixed blessing of a sheltered existence, in which we are blinded to the harsh realities of the world.

Sorry I can't be more positive, but I'm guessing the competition committee had similiar questions. But Good work! Keep up the writing.

thesaurus wrote:The story builds the suspense well enough, as the family member begin to slowly vanish, but I don't know what is going on in the garden scene. For example, what is this refering to, "res ingens, rosea ut aures suae atque quinque bacula habens"? Also, I don't know what the "apparatum angulatum" is supposed to be, "canum ut pellis muris." I know these are important elements of the story, but I'm not sure how to understand them.

I think the res ingens here is supposed to be a cat, as best as can be described by a mouse that has never seen one. The cat descendit e caelo - "pounces from above" and is described as rosea ut aures suae - "Red as her own ears" (small mice generally have pinkish or ruddy little ears, and red/orange is a common color for tomcats). Habens quinque bacula - "having five walking sticks" refers to the cat's tail and four lithe legs. The cat puts its prey in apparatum angulatum - "in a well-appointed corner". This is ominously described as canum ut pellis muris - "white as the fur of a mouse".

On a general level, what are the mice really doing outdoors at 'work'? I assumed they were each killed, but then why are they all still present in the garden when Candida arrives? Why is their being killed by humans a secret, and why would it be kept secret? I presume the moral is something about the danger of curiosity yet with the mixed blessing of a sheltered existence, in which we are blinded to the harsh realities of the world.

I agree; the story does a good job of building suspense, but has no real payoff. And why can the mice play in the garden at one point, but are killed there the next? What's the point of the grandmother's story? Just too many loose ends...

Thank you for commenting on my story. This did not turn out the way I wanted it to... Okay, I'm going to explain to you what I wanted the story to communicate:

The mice live in a cage in a testing laboratory which I tried to hint at by having the grandfather talk about green grass and Candida wondering what green means. The "res ingens, rosea ut aures suae atque quinque bacula habens" is supposed to be a human hand that seizes the mice and puts them into a machine where people test stuff on them. This is the mice's "work". If they survive, they return home and say they are back from "work". In the garden scene, Candida's sister Themis, their mother, their grandfather and the brothers that survived the last working day are there, whereas their father and two brothers are dead. I admit I should have described more clearly just how many relatives there are. "Stop animal experiments!" was meant to be the message of the story.
As Cato said, it is very difficult to have an I-narrator describe things that are unknown to himself/herself in a way that readers still can understand what the narrator is referring to.
I hope I will be able to do better in the future...